JDCMB is Jessica Duchen's Classical Music Blog. Music & writing, with CHOCOLATE AND SILVER, in London, UK. Author & journalist JD writes for The Independent.

Saturday, January 05, 2008

Top of the whats?

I'm going to limit my comment about this piece from today's Guardian, but I'd love to know what all of you think about it, dear readers. Here you go: Charles Hazlewood talks to journo about a new series on TV (BBC4, which is meant to be the Beeb's cultural gesture) explaining how pop songs use the same techniques as classical music, or some such. Read it here.

Sample: "What's so clever is it starts with an absolute deluge of F sharp minor. Then finally when Alex Turner comes in it's actually on a C sharp major chord, which is what's known as the dominant chord in music theory. Then you're made to wait to get that big deluge of that tonic chord again until the chorus which is a brilliant way of building your expectation, holding you back like an elastic band and then letting you ping."

Now, does this say anything more to you than 'this pop song includes two whole chords'? Is this an appropriate way for the Beeb to spend our TV licence fee? Over to you, people.

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Music, dance and writing in London, UK. Jessica writes for The Independent and numerous other publications. Author of biographies, novels, plays, libretti. Editor of The Amati Magazine. "Everything she writes is worth reading" - The Times..."Dazzling perceptiveness" - Joanna Lumley on Songs of Triumphant Love...
"A rare talent" - Gavin Esler on Hungarian Dances. Jessica is available to write articles on music and the arts and for public speaking engagements including pre-concert talks. To book her, please contact Limelight Celebrity Management: mail@limelightmanagement.com
www.jessicaduchen.co.uk